Resources

Resources

The tools, apps, and services that we use to run Pooxtra

Running a business in the digital age is a constant evolution. There is so much technology available at our fingertips that it can be hard to know what tool to use for each job. This list gives you a behind-the-scenes look at what we use to make Pooxtra run.

Website

We decided to use Shopify to power the shop portion of our site after testing and running for some periods. In our opinion, it’s the best hosted e-commerce solution available. Using Shopify allows us to focus on designing products and building our business rather than spending time trying to develop our own custom e-commerce platform and all of the headaches that come along with that. We can rely on Shopify to handle whatever traffic we throw at it even on our busiest days when we’re releasing new products or running special sales. The Shopify team has rolled out many improvements and new features in the last couple years and it just keeps getting better.

All of the non-shop portions of our site run on an installation of WordPress hosted on Fused.com. We developed a custom theme from scratch specifically for Pooxtra. Though it can have its quirks, we like WordPress for its flexibility and backend CMS that makes it easy to manage and update the various parts of our site.

Web hosting is one of those things you want to set and forget. You usually only think about it when it’s not working. Unfortunately, many hosting companies (even some of the big name ones) fall short on both customer service and the actual speed and up time. Thankfully our experience with Fused has been the opposite. We’ve been using Fused for years and everything from their personal customer service to the reliability of hosting has been awesome.

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Services

Shipping physical products is an insane amount of work (if you’ve ever done it, you know what I’m talking about). Shipstation is an absolute lifesaver and automates so much of the shipping process. If you are shipping products and not using Shipstation, you’re probably wasting a ton of time.

Emailing our customers is a vital part of running Pooxtra, especially as social media continues to get too noisy. There are a lot of great email marketing platforms available but we recently switched to Klaviyo because of the way it integrates directly with Shopify. We’re able to see all of our customer and subscriber data across both platforms and segment very specifically who receives each email. This way we’re able to send relevant emails to each person rather than mass-sending emails to everyone on our list. It’s a bit of a learning curve compared to some of the other more well-known email platforms, but it’s incredibly powerful and useful.

We used to manage all of our support and customer service via plain old email. It worked fine in the beginning but as Pooxtra grew we needed a better solution. Most apps seemed to complicate things with confusing ticket systems and ugly backend interfaces. What I love about Helpscout is how dead simple it is to use. It’s as easy as email and integrates directly with Shopify which makes customer support requests much easier to handle. Highly recommend.

Dropbox is one of those apps that I can’t remember not having. It’s super convenient for syncing files across all of my devices and without having to think about it. I’ll usually store all of my working files in Dropbox so I can access them anywhere and also make sure they’re backed up in the cloud. When I need to share files with someone, sending a Dropbox link is much smoother than trying to email massive files back and forth.

Numbers and metrics can be a massive distraction, but there’s definitely value in being able to see things like where traffic is coming from, how long people are spending on certain pages, and what’s converting into sales. Google Analytics allows us to track all of that (and for free). It’s not the prettiest interface and can be a bit overwhelming to sift through, but it gives us the data we need. It’s easy to fall down the rabbit hole of over-analyzing metrics and obsessing over numbers, but at the end of the day that data is only useful if you act on it. We don’t spend a ton of time in Google Analytics, but it comes in handy when we need it.

Founder’s Card is not a credit card, it’s an annual membership for entrepreneurs and business owners that provides discounts on a wide selection of business services, travel, and accommodations. Founder’s Card offers big discounts on hotels, rental cars, and a variety of other business services. If you run your own business Founder’s Card can come in really handy.

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Apps

I recently switched to using Dropbox Paper instead of Google Docs for brainstorming, working through ideas, and making lists of actionable to-do items. I use Paper very similar to the way I used Google Docs, but it feels much smoother, cleaner, and more intuitive for how I work and the way my brain processes things. It allows for very little customization compared to Google Docs, but these limitations keep me focused rather than fiddling around fancy text formatting and colors. I love that I can write in markdown and it auto-formats text as I type for headings, bullets, links, and checkboxes. Paper allows multiple people to type in the same file simultaneously which is great for collaboration. The commenting feature is also excellent for gathering feedback. Paper integrates nicely with files stored in Dropbox and allows you to pull in images simply by pasting the Dropbox link.

I now use Dropbox Paper for most things that I used to use google Docs for, but I still use Docs for working through long-form writing. When I’m writing new Journal posts (such as the one you are reading), I’ll copy and paste my rough draft from iA Writer into a new Google Doc to work on with my editor. The “commenting” and “suggesting” modes are more robust than Dropbox Paper and come in handy for approving changes and being able to compare past revisions.

Email is a necessary evil and is a huge part of how I manage the many different parts of Pooxtra. I’ve been using Apple Mail for as long as I’ve owned a Mac. I hear a lot of people complain about it, but its simplicity and lack of features gets the job done for me. I’ve tried using Gmail in the browser and a variety of other email apps, but I always come back to Mail on both Mac and iOS.

Simplenote is my catch all. I dump everything into Simplenote (links I want to remember, to-do lists, blog drafts, shirt ideas, travel itineraries, etc). I love that it auto-syncs across all my devices and can quickly input from anywhere. It’s not the most robust app compared to things like Evernote, but its simplicity and lack of features is why it works so well for me. It’s super easy to jump in and out of when I need to jot down a quick note and the search feature makes it easy to quickly find notes.

Most surveys are ugly, boring, and a pain to fill out, but Typeform makes the survey experience so much better and actually fun to use. Both the customer side and the backend are well-designed and all of the details are thoughtfully considered. The drag and drop editor makes it super easy to build surveys and customize the look and feel with just a few clicks. I love seeing companies tackle things that are normally thought of as mundane and make them fun.

Email still works well for longer, non-urgent communication but Slack makes it really nice to communicate with multiple people at once or have a quick conversation where there’s a lot of back and forth. It’s essentially a much smarter, better-designed, more powerful version of the old chat apps we used to use like Google Chat or AIM. One of the best things about Slack is being able to pick up where I left off on any device.

There are hundreds of different text editors and word processors to write in, but the distraction-free environment and subtle design details of iA Writer make writing so much more enjoyable. It puts me in a different mindset and has really helped me focus. There’s only one font and pretty much no customization. I was skeptical of its simplicity at first, but once I tried it I was immediately hooked. Whenever I’m doing any type of writing I open iA Writer full screen on my iMac or MacBook Air and type away.

I often find myself typing the same email responses or text over and over and Text Expander has saved me so much time. It allows you create a custom abbreviation for any snippet of text. Simply type the abbreviation and it auto-fills with whatever text you’ve assigned to it. It’s another one of those apps that has become completely integrated into my daily workflow and gets immediately installed on any new computer.

I like to keep my dock simple with only the apps I use on a daily basis. Alfred comes is handy for launching apps, doing quick calculations, saving multiple text snippets to the clipboard, and more. I also love the subtle design details and interactions throughout the app. I’m not an Alfred power user, but I use its basic functions every single day.

I’ve never been great at keeping a detailed calendar, but Fantastical is the only thing that’s helped me stay sane and actually put appointments and events on my calendar. Both on desktop and iOS, Fantastical makes is super easy to add new events with natural language input. Rather than click a bunch of tedious menus for start/end times and alarms, I can simply type “Lunch with kids tomorrow” and Fantastical makes an appointment for 12pm the next day with preset alarms.

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Design

Illustrator is pretty much an extension of my hand at this point. I’ve used Illustrator for years and use it to design every new product. I spend 90% of my design time in Illustrator and love working with the infinite scalability and clean lines of vectors rather than fussing with pixels. Illustrator has a bit of a learning curve at first, but once you get the hang of working with vector shapes and paths it’s quite fun.

While Illustrator is my go-to for most of my design work, Photoshop still has its place. I use Photoshop whenever the final output will be in pixels (website graphics, email newsletter assets, etc). I also use Photoshop a lot for advanced photo editing. After I’ve processed the raw photos in Lightroom, I often bring them into Photoshop to retouch or fine tune a bit more. Photoshop’s keyboard shortcuts are practically embedded in my brain.

I use Lightroom for processing and editing all of my photos. If you’re at all serious about photography, Lightroom is a no-brainer. I always shoot in raw, import the photos into Lightroom, and then process them. Lightroom makes it super easy to fine tune and batch process multiple photos with custom presets.

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I’ll continue adding to this list as it changes over time and our needs as a business evolve. If you have a question about anything I listed above drop me a line or send me a tweet. I’m happy to share more about our process and workflow.

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